Aptitude is a ["Ncurses"] based ["?FrontEnd"] to ["Apt"], the debian package manager. Since it is text based, it is ran from a terminal or a CLI (command line interface). Aptitude has a number of useful features, including:

a mutt-like syntax for matching packages in a flexible manner

mark packages as "automatically installed" or "manually installed" so that packages can be auto-removed when no longer required

colorful preview of actions about to be taken

dselect-like persistence of user actions

the ability to retrieve and display the Debian changelog of most packages

aptitude is also Y2K-compliant, non-fattening, naturally cleansing, and housebroken.

Run

Enter the following from a ["terminal"]:

aptitude

Use

After running it, utilize:

F10 to access to the menu and use aptitude. This is the main key.

? for help

The 'up', 'down', 'left', 'right' to navigate.

The 'Enter' key, to select

'q' to quit

The common use of aptitude in TUI is; run aptitude; press 'u' (update the lists of available packages); press 'U' (Mark all upgradable packages to be upgraded); (search/select some stuff to install, is optional); press 'g' (to see the pending actions and modify if needed); press 'g' (again, to start the download).

Some time when you need to resolve conflicts, you discover that you did an bad choice; you want may be easy 'Cancel pending actions' in the 'Actions' menu, so that you easy can retry.

You can also use aptitude like you was used to use apt-get:

Update the packages list:

aptitude update

Upgrade the packages:

aptitude upgrade

Install foo:

aptitude install foo

Remove bar:

aptitude remove bar

Purge foo:

aptitude purge foo

Hey, what's ["foo"] and ["bar"]?

Personally, i still use apt-cache search foo to make an search, the aptitude search foo is slower. But you should try the aptitude search foo way. You should discover that the output is a bit different as of apt-cache, in some case, it may be usefull to search for an package and see at the same time if these is already installed or not.

The manual of aptitude is realy an gold mine. We not got to duplicate this useful informations, so please take an look there for futher informations.